


Of Spies and Snowfall

by HolmesianDeduction



Series: 25 Days of Holiday Fic 2k12 [3]
Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - All Media Types, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Carré
Genre: 25 Days of Fic, Character Study, Gen, Snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-05
Updated: 2012-12-05
Packaged: 2017-11-20 08:57:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/583560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HolmesianDeduction/pseuds/HolmesianDeduction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[25 Days of Holiday Fic: Day 3 - Snow]</p><p>For all their supposed similarities, George Smiley has never liked the snow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Spies and Snowfall

             George Smiley has never been fond of snow.  It didn’t particularly matter what sort of snow.  English snow, German snow, Swiss snow, Swedish snow.  Powdery snow, clumpy snow that was half-ice, thick-packed snow.  It was all more or less the same to him.

             Ann would probably have said that George ought to like the snow.  Not because it rendered the world into shades of black and white and grey, but because, she would point out, it was like him.

             “It covers everything - rendering it all in the same shade of white and still above,” he could imagine her saying over a glass of wine, “but beneath it, all the same activity and colour is still there - things are alive underneath the surface.  How is that so different from you?”

             He knew what she meant, of course - or would mean, had she actually said it - but that didn’t change the fact that he didn’t agree.  That he was not as still or serene below as he was above, he could not deny, but he was decidedly _not_ snow.

             Snow, for one, muffles things, and George, while living in a world that’s very existence was muffled, was not overtly fond of the practice of muffling things - he was cryptic when need be, but never unnecessarily unclear.  Snow was also cold, and wet, and George Smiley was not quite either of these things.  Cool, certainly, as charity when he had to be, but hardly cold in the icy ways that snow was, or that the hardest of the scalphunters could be when they needed to be.  Damp, quite possibly, if it were raining hard enough in London, but on the whole he was quite dry.

             Worst of all, for George, snow was a hindrance.  It got everywhere, like spilt ink, and it muddied things up, something which he despised.  There was a difference, which some people failed to discern, between a puzzle and something that was simply muddled, and while there was a degree of pleasure in the unravelling of a puzzle, there simply was nothing of the sort in trying to undo someone else’s muddling up of things.

             It could have been by that principle alone that he would have sought to dissociate himself from snow, but things never were so simple.  However, when asked once, he had simply told Mendel that he didn’t like the stuff on account of the way that it made travel a bit bothersome, and Mendel had let it drop despite the known fact that with few exceptions, George Smiley did not, by habit, stray far from Bywater Street except for when it was necessary.


End file.
